The latest Google doodle pays tribute to the celebrated children's author Edith Nesbit, who was born 155 years ago on 15 August 1858, with an illustration of her best known work The Railway Children.

The story, published as a novel in 1906, concerns three children, Bobbie, Peter and Phyllis, who along with their mother are forced to downsize from their comfortable middle class London home and go and live in a much smaller house in the country when their father is falsely imprisoned for selling state secrets.

Now regarded as a classic of children's literature, the book has never been out of print and owes much of its enduring popularity to TV and film adaptations, most famously the 1970 Lionel Jeffries film, starring Jenny Agutter as Bobbie – a perennial staple of UK Christmas television.

Nesbit is also well known as one of the first children's writers to blend fantasy and magic with realistic elements in novels such as Five Children and It and The Phoenix and the Carpet, which have also been adapted for TV. In this regard her work is considered a major influence on later children's writers, including JK Rowling.

Born in Kennington in south London, Nesbit married bank clerk Hubert Bland in 1880, with whom she had five children. She and her husband were founder members of the Fabian Society and their friends included George Bernard Shaw and HG Wells.